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Back Shelf Beautiesby Willie Waffle

Crazy Like A
Fox

If you live anywhere near a major city, you are quite familiar with the growing
tensions as cities expand outwards via the suburbs into historic farmlands,
and older neighborhoods within the cities experience gentrification. It was
a subject even touched on by The
Sopranos! (By the way, I am from Binghamton, NY, and I can testify
that no one as hot as Juliana Margulies, the female real estate agent who
got Tony all hot and bothered and claimed she was from Binghamton, EVER came
from Binghamton. Believe me, if babes like her were walking the streets,
I would have stayed). Crazy Like A Fox
tries to examine it, too, but the story gets too wrapped up in trying to
impose some wacky humor where heart and soul are needed.

Roger Rees stars as Nat Banks - a Virginia farmer as proud of his family's
heritage as he is of his huge farm in rural Virginia. He has fallen on hard
times, and the farm either must be sold or auctioned off in order to pay
the three mortgages and back taxes. Of course, this breaks Nat's heart as
he stands to be the Banks who loses the property and house that has been
in his family for generations. The home practically is a landmark with ties
to some of the most historic moments in American history (which is true of
the house used in the movie, which happens to be owned by the writer/director,
and many of the stories you hear in the movie actually happened), but Nat
is forced to sell to Will (Paul Fitzgerald) and Ellie Sherman (Christina
Rouner) - a Washington, DC yuppie couple with lots of money and no appreciation
for the land's natural beauty and the home's history. Begrudgingly, Nat agrees
to sell the home and land after Will and Ellie make some important promises
to preserve it and allow our hero to stay on as farm manager, but they quickly
break those promises.

When Nat decides to stay on the property by living in a cave down by the
creek, can he come up with a plan to save his family's heritage and home?
Will anyone care?

Writer/director Richard Squires has an interesting story that confronts the
growing tensions between old Virginia and the creeping DC suburbs that threaten
to extinguish the area's rich culture and history, but he waters that story
down with attempts to make Crazy Like A
Fox into a slapstick, wacky comedy, which marginalizes his characters.
Too quickly, Squires gets away from the more compelling justification for
Nat's anger (the swindle), and dives into a cultural battle between those
evil city folk who have the law on their side, and the southerners who claim
a moral high ground.

Squires forces the performances to slip into caricature, especially Rees
who seems to be getting pushed to portray Nat as a lunatic, when he needs
to make him into more of a southern gentleman with the gravitas to argue
his case and win over the audience. Instead of ranting and raving like a
certifiably insane person, Rees needs to tone it down a bit, and Squires
needs to remove silly scenes of Nat riding through the farm in an old Confederate
uniform, or slipping and sliding around to fall on his rear end for some
pitiful attempt at humor. Also, Will and Ellie are taken too far to the extreme
since even the most money-grubbing evil rich people in DC would have some
appreciation for the amazing history involved in the house, or at least feign
concern for it and the locals so they appear to be good hearted liberals.

Squires has a moving and tragic story, when he lets that shine through. Too
often, he is making a movie that isn't crazy and wacky enough to be madcap,
and not moving and sad enough to be tragic. Crazy
Like A Fox is a good movie when Squires focuses on the area's
heritage and people's desire to save their history and way of life. These
scenes capture the audience's heart and make us wish our hero was more likable,
so we could fight along side him.

Those who live in the DC area should also look for Mark Joy as real estate
agent John Randolph. Best known to DC TV viewers as Mark Down from the Sheehy
Ford commercials, he is an accomplished actor with many roles in television
and movies such as Dawson's Creek,
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya
Sisterhood, Homicide,
The Wire, Law
and Order and Walker: Texas
Ranger. He puts in a solid, all-too-brief performance that brings
forth all of the genteelness and steadiness that Rees needed. Plus, he must
be the toughest man in Washington if he made an appearance on Chuck Norris'
television program and lived to tell about it. I believe you have to survive
a week in the jungle, then wrestle Chuck Norris in a swamp full of alligators
before you are allowed on the set.